Clutches
by Stephane Richer
Summary: "I should hit you," she mutters but it's really just a reflex, a nervous habit, her go-to phrase. (Araki/Nakatani)


Clutches

Disclaimer: Don't own.

* * *

He taps the pint glass with stubby fingers; they slip against the condensation in the heat of the bar teeming with people. It's hot by Akita standards (which is pretty warm, but nowhere close to the worst Nakatani's ever felt) and the way they just stuff more people into the bar so they can make more money compounds the problem. They've both taken off their suit jackets, but it's clear they're still overdressed, even as they roll up their sleeves and sip more beer.

"So your captain calls you Ma-boy, too, huh?" Masako gives him a wry grin, one that definitely would not be on her face if not for the heat and humidity mixed with alcohol creating this effect on her.

"Your ace calls you Masako-chin," he replies. It's the only leverage he has.

Predictably, she scowls. "He doesn't even call any of his teammates by their first names."

He laughs. She tries to scowl harder, but ends up just turning away. The side of her face is remarkably unblemished and unmarred even from years and years of fighting. It's not because she's wearing makeup (even now, she wears next to none—she's got the beginnings of crow's feet on the corners of her eyes, and the undertones of her skin are not brought out by any creams or powders. If he wants to see them, he has to look close, closer than she lets most people get.) but because even as a rough-and-tumble kid with a foggy future at best she was good at keeping the damage under control, a swift and agile fighter, a skill that transferred very well to the basketball courts where she ducked away from defenders and passed the ball between the spaces no one realized existed.

Their conversation lapses, as it tends to, into silence. They've known each other too long, see each other often enough—at least a couple of times a month she'll end up in Tokyo or he'll take the train up to see her and they'll go out to eat or have some drinks. Of course, since the Shutoku gym's boilers flooded and rendered the facilities completely useless, they're using summer as the time for a much-needed total renovation, leaving Nakatani without a facility for this year's summer training, so Masako was the first person he thought to call. Training his kids alongside hers is an interesting experience—his all respond apprehensively but somewhat obediently to her intense training regime, whereas hers try their best to shirk it. Whether they just want attention or there's something deeper is a larger analysis that Nakatani wants to or can take on right now. He doesn't know anyone else in Akita and most of her friends are gone for the summer or live elsewhere, so they've ended up spending most of their time together. If he's being honest with himself (and really, why shouldn't he be?) he wants her to himself. He's really got no right to be possessive—but he feels it, stirring up in his gut, feelings he thought he'd buried.

Somehow, she had been drawn to him when they first met. She was cautious, like a feral cat, but eventually made her way up to him, not scared off by anything. It was, perhaps, his consistency, his reliability, that made an unstable force like her unable to look away from him. He didn't know all that much about her past, mostly rumors about her gang activity (rumors that turned out to be exaggerations strongly rooted in fact) but what he did know was that it was never terribly focused. She'd moved around a lot as a kid, information she'd volunteered when they were walking by the water. She always rubbed people the wrong way and wouldn't back down from a challenge. And it was her intensity, the way she pushed herself and others to do better (the women's national team had taken leaps and bounds since she'd joined and he would swear it had something to do with the way she involved everyone in her ridiculous training routines), which captivated him. Her beauty and talent took a backseat to this intensity—or, more accurately, they were heightened by it, but everything came back to the way she carried herself.

But, of course, he could not win her heart. He knows he did not try very hard, but it was not his place to try, not when she'd had all of those insane delinquent suitors who were impossible to understand with their terrible grammar and affected speech—and, of course, Takeuchi, who was head-over-heels in love with her and proclaimed her praises daily. And why shouldn't she choose him? She was trying to get away from her old life, to lead a proper one and become a functioning member of society, and Gengen was part of that.

The basketball courts had become her sanctuary, the place where she could relax and not worry about people beating her up or jeers sent her way. It became the constant in her life even though her teammates changed and the physical location of the court changed. And she excelled, pouring her heart into basketball—really, Nakatani thinks, this must be what makes her into a good coach. She knows you only get out of it what you put in, and she knows the importance, the sanctity of basketball. He would like to suppose that he knows it, too, but really he just cheats. He recruits the good kids, the ones who are going to work hard no matter what, the easy ones.

"Like goes to like," he mutters, more to himself.

"I'm sorry?"

The way Masako tilts her head and stops herself from squinting at him is kind of…something. He can't describe it.

She hadn't chosen Takeuchi after all, though, which surprised Nakatani—not pleasantly or unpleasantly (he still had no chance with her).

They split the bill, as always, and head back to the training compound together, walking in the quiet summer night streets. This is what their friendship was built on, comfortable silences, walking together and thinking together. He's so deep in thought he almost gets hit by a car, realizing too late to do anything—but she's already yanked hard on his forearm (it's easy to forget how much raw strength she possesses) and he's stumbling back onto the curb.

The way they've positioned themselves is odd; there's something a bit off about it. She's grasping his arm as he stands facing her, looking down at the top of her head (for she is looking down as well). They're not touchy-feely people, neither one of them, not like Tora—but he does not shake her off and she does not release him. He does not want her to, although he expects her to snap at him any minute now, to go on one of her patented ten-minute "why you are a fucking idiot" speeches.

"Masako," he says softly, not wanting to disturb the moment or provoke her.

She raises her head, straight black hair tumbling over her shoulders and down her back as if she's some kind of refined lady. Even though she's wearing heels, he's still got a considerable height advantage. Still, it's not good to put more pressure on the balls of her feet than the shoes are already creating—and sometimes even he can be a gentleman. He leans down and places his mouth on hers.

She hums softly into the kiss, slightly lessening the pressure of her hand on his arm but still not letting go. He hasn't kissed anyone in an embarrassingly long time, but she doesn't seem to begrudge him that; her heart is beating perhaps a bit faster than normal and she's kind of rocking on her feet, although that may or may not have something to do with the shoes. He pulls away finally; her hair is blowing in his face.

Her hand drops into his. Her sharp eyes are peering up at him intently. "I should hit you," she mutters but it's really just a reflex, a nervous habit, her go-to phrase.

* * *

She is so lovely to him, so lovely but so vain but unwilling to see her own loveliness, forcing him to turn out the lights so that the moon illuminates her in awkwardly slanted beams (she consents to leaving the curtains open at least), the pale skin that the sun can never even catch a glimpse of, except for her tanned hands and the spot on the back of her neck that she always manages to miss spreading the lotion over. The eerie alabaster glow accentuates the scars she has, one across her hipbone and one on her right breast that cannot be recent but must have been a deep wound—how did she survive? The jagged line suits her, though, and he kisses along it as she whimpers and if he was thinking about her face he'd imagine that disgusted look, the one she gets when someone is with his or her words digging deep into her mind and her past, to a place she does not want to go (he would go there with her, of course).

Her right shoulder blade is covered in a tattoo of some kind of majestic bird of prey. An owl? A hawk? The bird's wing is emblazoned with "Falcon's Talons". The bird's beady eyes are incredibly menacing; the ink is horribly lifelike. He closes his eyes and kisses the nape of her neck through the pool of black hair and hears her sigh.

Her hands are gracefully kneading his thighs, massaging, sort of (he's very tense) but teasing and pleasurable, too. The hands grow more urgently uneven and she slides one up, tracing over his hipbone and his stomach (which is softer than he'd like it to be, and he's got some vanity, too, so it might be a good thing the lights are off and she can't see the way the skin hangs off slightly and doesn't quite fit his abdomen, has no muscle-contours to cling to. She can still feel it, his breath hitches and soon he's free of self-consciousness because her hands are fucking _magic_.

Her mouth, when it's not complaining or frowning or yelling, is gifted, her lips and tongue and teeth making him clench his jaw and fists, hands in her hair, soft and well-kept through his stiff fingers. Her lips come up to meet his again, soft and swollen in the heat of the waxing moon and still summer air.


End file.
